By: Frank Green
After almost a week of learning, training, and practicing driving the ambulance like lunatics, McBride’s has a new crop of paramedics on the way.
The recruitsâ€Steven Brabant, Joy Lemke, Nicolaas Mortensen, and this reporterâ€still aren’t ready to treat patients. They’ll have to make it through dozens more hours of training before that happens. But they could soon be on the road, transporting those in need of care, and learning the ropes of paramedic work in the Robson Valley and beyond. They’ll shore up the current team of paramedics and some of them might even go on to do the work full time. More than ten paramedics in McBride have made careers of it in the province, said Unit Chief Rodger Peterson.
Still, Peterson stressed that the new hires wouldn’t change much about the day-to-day operations of the ambulance crew, which has been operating normally.
“It’s additional staff if we need them. It’s a [sic] dispersement of the workload,” he said.
Above all, Peterson said he was grateful for the help from all corners of the town in making the hiring happen.
“The town itself, the village council, the chamber of commerce and the people in general have been extremely supportive and encouraging to secure new members to be able to maintain and continue with what we’re doing,” he said.
